I am a Town - Mary Chapin Carpenter @ Wolf Trap

Taken from the "Jubilee: Live at Wolf Trap" performance and found on the album "Come On, Come On".

Carpenter has struggled with periods of depression since childhood. While on tour with her album "The Calling" in spring 2007, Carpenter experienced severe chest and back pain. She continued to perform until a bout of breathlessness took her to the ER, where she learned she had suffered a pulmonary embolism.

Cancelling her summer tour to recover, Carpenter felt that she had let everyone down and fell into a depression before rediscovering "the learning curve of gratitude." Carpenter spoke about the experience on National Public Radio's "This I Believe" program in June 2007.

I Am a Town lyrics:

I'm a town in Carolina, I'm a detour on a ride
For a phone call and a soda, I'm a blur from the driver's side
I'm the last gas for an hour if you're going twenty-five
I am Texaco and tobacco, I am dust you leave behind

I am peaches in September, and corn from a roadside stall
I'm the language of the natives, I'm a cadence and a drawl
I'm the pines behind the graveyard, and the cool beneath their shade, where the boys have left their beer cans
I am weeds between the graves.

My porches sag and lean with old black men and children
Their sleep is filled with dreams, I never can fulfill them
I am a town.

I am a church beside the highway where the ditches never drain
I'm a Baptist like my daddy, and Jesus knows my name
I am memory and stillness, I am lonely in old age; I am not your destination
I am clinging to my ways
I am a town.

I'm a town in Carolina, I am billboards in the fields
I'm an old truck up on cinder blocks, missing all my wheels
I am Pabst Blue Ribbon, American, and "Southern Serves the South"
I am tucked behind the Jaycees sign, on the rural route
I am a town
I am a town
I am a town
Southbound.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• am
• Town
• Mary
• Chapin
• Carpenter
• acoustic
• live concert
• folk music
• guitar
• Wolf Trap
• Come On Come On
• ballad
• original

[TrapDaddy65]

What an amazing vibe! I've heard this song a million times, but not like this.

Thanks for the post.

[retafmil]

@TrapDaddy65 -  I agree. She performs it *so* well.

[gorfitz]

No one and I mean no one can write and perform a song like MCC.The images she evokes make all the other writers seem pale in comparison So called"Country entertainers of the year" should watch this concert to see a real artist at work.

[tishhead]

if i were a songwriter, i might quit after hearing this. i mean, what's the point?

[musikgirl1]

I live on the west coast but know towns like this.....

[tref101]

EPIC..........

[mrflashfromthepast]

this song was about eastern n.c. about small towns maby fading out..no longer to be there...it was about small town living. old men on the front porch. cars up on blocks..beer cans on the side of the road. billboards. jc signs i am a town...south bound

[lonelyindigogirl]

wow....brilliant....:)